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Comment by throw101010 | Hacker News Reader

And you have only one party to blame for this, it also predates all the Trump unhinged cases/decisons and even his first mandate.

Republicans simply suceeded in their plan to take over the federal judiciary branch from the top, in great part with the help of the Federalist Society.

The only answer if Democrats ever take power back is to pack the court now, no amount of unwritten rules following and norms respecting can work against people who abuse the system and packed the court themselves (by unjustifiably blocking candidates nominations which would have balanced the court, for years)

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I wonder if a two-party race to the ethical bottom is the only way to fix things because if underhanded unethical tactics only benefit one party then they won't want to fix it.

This is downvoted, but true.

Democrats, while better than republicans in this regard, are also to blame. It is not one or the other.

Nah, it's really just Republicans doing all the corruption these days at the SUpreme Court. Unless you can provide some decent examples of Democrats. You seem to be bothsidesing the issue when McConnell stole multiple seats.

Could you elaborate?

How so? The judiciary is stacked with compromised individuals. the republicans did this.

Obama should have picked a replacement for RBG. Biden and the democratic congress should have done more to get the judiciary back in line. They had their opportunities.

Obama and Biden should have done more. But they are not responsible for the malicious and calculated mess that has followed.

RBG passed away while Trump was president. Obama did pick a replacement for Antonin Scalia though: Merrick Garland. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even give Garland a hearing arguing it was "too close to the presidential election", even though Obama's term had about one year to go.

Obama could have done more to pressure RBG to retire into a friendly Senate.

Clearance Thomas was confirmed 52-48, with 11 dems voting in favor [0]. He wouldn't have been confirmed without dem votes.

(The other five shitheads would have been confirmed without dem votes if I'm not mistaken.)

[0] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...

I wasn’t aware of that - thank you.

No worries.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely blame the republicans for the state of the court. I'm just saying the dems have some shit on their hands too.

Clarence Thomas was confirmed in a very different era of politics, when the long term right wing strategy was only just beginning to take root; the vituperative rhetoric was still on the comparative fringe of talk radio; and cooperation was still the norm from both sides.

It’s their job to spot the rotten ones and block them.

Everyone who voted for him is culpable.

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